Loading...

TC Roundup: The price of getting Apple's attention: $12B

Loading...

The price of getting Apple's attention: $12 billion: Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. is locked in an investment duel with Samsung Electronics Co. to meet booming U.S. demand for Apple Inc.'s iPhone and other smartphones, benefiting electronics suppliers around the globe.

Taiwan Semiconductor, the world's biggest custom-chipmaker, plans record spending on plants and equipment this year. It's lavishing $12 billion on factories -- more than Intel Corp. has ever spent in a year -- to counter investments that Samsung is making to win chip orders from Apple, Qualcomm Inc. and its own handset division.(Bloomberg)

Google Capital sets sights on India: More evidence of global investors' growing interest in India's startups: Google's new investment arm is setting up shop in the country.

Loading...

In what will mark the first such expansion outside the U.S., Google Capital — a wing of the tech giant that invests in mid-stage technology companies — is interviewing candidates for a position to lead their efforts in the populous nation. (The Wall Street Journal)

Uniting with rivals? Welcome to the new Microsoft: There may be no more surprising development in technology over the past year than Microsoft's radical transformation into an industry collaborator.

Long surviving on huge license and maintenance fees for its proprietary Windows and Office software, Microsoft historically wanted to sell you the full stack, from the operating system on your desktop to the security, networking and storage in data center servers. It didn't matter if someone else could do it better.(CNBC)

Loading...

China's WeChat sends a message to Line and Kakao in their home turf: Mobile messaging apps Line and Kakao Talk are busy trying to conquer overseas markets such as Southeast Asia and India. But they may do well to keep a close eye on their home turf of Japan and South Korea as China's WeChat amasses more users.

Among six messaging apps, WeChat saw the biggest upptick in usage in Japan and South Korea last month versus a year earlier, boosted by its gaming, e-commerce and multimedia capabilities, according to data on Android smartphones tracked by Mobidia. An analysis by the mobile analytics firm compared the amount of time users spent on Tencent's WeChat, Naver's Line, Daum Kakao's Kakao Talk, Blackberry Messenger and Facebook's WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger.(Reuters)


Sign up for Newsletter

Select your Newsletter frequency